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Best Bright Data Alternatives in 2026

Sales Tools

Best Bright Data Alternatives in 2026

Bright Data is the most powerful proxy network available, but it is built for enterprise data engineering teams, not B2B outbound sales. This post covers the 6 best alternatives with Apify as the top pick for sales teams that need pre-built scrapers for LinkedIn, job boards, and company data at pric

Michel Lieben

MAR 25 2026

Bright Data is the largest proxy and data collection network in the world, 72M+ residential IPs across 195 countries, enterprise-grade infrastructure, and the technical depth to scrape virtually anything at scale.

But most B2B outbound teams do not need all of that. Bright Data was built for enterprise data engineering teams running massive collection pipelines. For sales teams trying to pull LinkedIn lists, scrape job postings, or build targeted prospect data, it is expensive, complex to set up, and far more infrastructure than the job requires.

This guide covers the best Bright Data alternatives in 2026, with a clear recommendation for B2B outbound teams and honest trade-offs for every other use case.

1. What Bright Data Does Best (and Where It Falls Short)

Bright Data's core product is its proxy network. 72M+ residential IPs means you can scrape at scale without getting blocked, even on the most aggressive anti-bot sites. It also offers pre-built datasets, a browser API, and a web scraper IDE for teams that want managed extraction on top of the proxy layer.

Where it leads:

→ Proxy coverage: deepest residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxy network available

→ Geographic targeting: city-level routing across 195 countries

→ Anti-bot bypass: handles even the most aggressive protections at enterprise scale

→ Dataset marketplace: pre-built datasets for LinkedIn, Amazon, social platforms, and more

Where teams look elsewhere:

→ Pricing: Bright Data pricing is enterprise by design, monthly minimums, pay-per-GB proxy costs, and contract requirements that most growth-stage and mid-market B2B teams cannot justify

→ Complexity: setting up a Bright Data pipeline requires engineering time, infrastructure decisions, and ongoing maintenance that outbound sales teams rarely have

→ Use case fit: it was not built for B2B outbound prospecting, it was built for large-scale data engineering

→ Onboarding: no Actor marketplace or ready-to-run scraper templates; you configure everything from scratch

If you are a B2B sales or marketing team trying to build prospect lists from LinkedIn, job boards, or company websites, you are paying for infrastructure you will never use.

2. The Best Bright Data Alternatives in 2026

These are the tools we recommend based on real outbound campaigns across 300+ B2B clients.

2.1 Apify, Best Overall for B2B Outbound

Apify is the strongest Bright Data alternative for B2B outbound teams. Where Bright Data gives you raw infrastructure to build on, Apify gives you a marketplace of 10,000+ pre-built Actors that scrape the exact sources outbound teams need, LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, job boards, Google Maps, G2, with cloud execution, proxy rotation, and CAPTCHA solving handled automatically.

The difference in time-to-value is significant. Setting up a Bright Data pipeline for LinkedIn scraping takes days of engineering work. With Apify, you find the right Actor, configure it in minutes, and run it at scale.

Common use cases for outbound teams:

→ Pulling LinkedIn post engagers to build warm prospect lists

→ Extracting Sales Navigator search results at volume

→ Scraping job postings to find companies hiring for specific roles

→ Building local business lists from Google Maps

→ Targeting competitor customers from G2 and Capterra reviews

Pricing starts at $49/month for the Starter plan, with a free tier that includes $5 in monthly credits.com/tools/apify">coldiq.com/tools/apify.

2.2 Oxylabs, Best for Enterprise Proxy Infrastructure

Oxylabs is the closest direct competitor to Bright Data, a large residential proxy network with datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxy options, plus a managed scraping API for teams that need extraction on top of the proxy layer.

Oxylabs is slightly more accessible than Bright Data in terms of pricing entry points and sales process, while still operating at the same infrastructure scale. For enterprise teams that need a Bright Data alternative with the same depth of proxy coverage, Oxylabs is the natural comparison.

→ Best for: Enterprise data teams that need large-scale proxy infrastructure with a more straightforward procurement process

→ Limitation: Still enterprise-priced and overkill for standard B2B outbound use cases

2.3 ScraperAPI, Best for Developers Who Need Proxy Infrastructure Without Enterprise Pricing

ScraperAPI gives developers the core infrastructure layer, rotating proxies, JavaScript rendering, CAPTCHA solving, through a simple API. You send a URL, you get back clean HTML. No proxy management, no browser configuration, no engineering overhead on that layer.

It is not a full scraping platform like Apify. There are no pre-built scrapers; you write the extraction logic yourself. But for development teams that want reliable proxy infrastructure at a fraction of Bright Data's cost, ScraperAPI is a clean and affordable option.

→ Best for: Developers building custom scrapers who need proxy infrastructure without enterprise pricing or complexity

→ Limitation: No pre-built scrapers, you write all extraction logic yourself

2.4 ScrapingBee, Best for JavaScript-Heavy Site Scraping

ScrapingBee is a developer API with a headless Chrome rendering engine. It handles JavaScript-heavy sites reliably, single-page applications, dynamically-loaded content, complex front-end rendering, and returns the fully-rendered HTML without requiring any browser setup on your end.

For teams that need to scrape modern web applications where the content loads via JavaScript, ScrapingBee handles it cleanly. Like ScraperAPI, it is a developer tool that covers the infrastructure layer; you supply the extraction logic.

→ Best for: Scraping JavaScript-heavy web applications where standard HTML parsing falls short

→ Limitation: No pre-built scrapers, pricing increases quickly at volume

2.5 Smartproxy, Best for Mid-Market Proxy Needs

Smartproxy is a residential and datacenter proxy network positioned between budget proxy tools and the enterprise pricing of Bright Data and Oxylabs. It covers the core use cases, rotating residential IPs, geo-targeting, JavaScript rendering, at pricing that mid-market teams can actually justify.

For teams that need real residential proxy coverage but have run into the pricing wall with Bright Data, Smartproxy is the most direct alternative at a lower cost tier. The network is smaller than Bright Data's, but for most scraping jobs the difference does not matter in practice.

→ Best for: Mid-market teams that need residential proxy coverage without Bright Data's enterprise pricing

→ Limitation: Smaller network than Bright Data or Oxylabs, may hit limits on the most aggressively-blocked domains

2.6 Zyte, Best for Structured Web and E-Commerce Data Extraction

Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) specializes in structured data extraction from websites, particularly e-commerce, product listings, pricing pages, and retail directories. It offers a managed scraping API with automatic data extraction that handles structure and parsing, not just proxy routing.

For B2B teams targeting e-commerce, retail, or product-heavy industries where structured product and company data is the goal, Zyte covers sources where other tools in this list have weaker coverage.

→ Best for: Structured e-commerce and web data extraction where clean, parsed data is the deliverable

→ Limitation: Weaker coverage of B2B SaaS sources like LinkedIn, job boards, and sales intelligence platforms

3. Which Bright Data Alternative Should You Choose?

The right choice depends entirely on your use case:

→ B2B outbound scraping (LinkedIn, Sales Nav, job boards, G2): Apify, the Actor marketplace covers every major outbound data source out of the box

→ Enterprise proxy infrastructure with deep network coverage: Oxylabs, same scale as Bright Data, slightly more accessible

→ Custom scraper development on a developer budget: ScraperAPI, clean API, affordable pricing, no pre-built scrapers needed

→ JavaScript-heavy web applications: ScrapingBee, Chrome rendering engine, handles dynamic content reliably

→ Mid-market residential proxy coverage: Smartproxy, right-sized pricing between budget and enterprise

→ Structured e-commerce and product data: Zyte, purpose-built for clean, structured extraction from retail sources

For B2B outbound specifically, Apify is the answer in almost every scenario. It solves the same core problems Bright Data claims to solve, reliable scraping at scale, proxy rotation, CAPTCHA handling, but with pre-built Actors for the exact data sources outbound teams use, and pricing that makes sense for a sales team rather than a data engineering department.

4. Bottom Line

Bright Data is the most powerful proxy and data collection platform available in 2026. For enterprise data engineering teams building large-scale pipelines against heavily-protected sites, it earns its price.

For B2B outbound teams, it is the wrong tool. The pricing, complexity, and infrastructure-first design do not map to the actual job, building targeted prospect lists from LinkedIn, job boards, and company data sources.

Apify is the right alternative. Pre-built Actors for every major outbound data source, transparent pricing from $49/month, and zero infrastructure setup make it the default choice for sales and GTM teams building outbound data pipelines.

The other tools in this list cover specific gaps: Oxylabs for enterprise proxy depth, ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee for developer pipelines, Smartproxy for mid-market proxy budgets, and Zyte for e-commerce data.com/tools/apify">coldiq.com/tools/apify.

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Michel Lieben

Founder, CEO

Michel Lieben is the Founder & CEO of ColdIQ, a B2B sales prospecting agency trusted by 100+ organizations. He’s launched hundreds of outbound campaigns, mastered tools like Clay and Lemlist, and shares sharp, actionable insights on scaling sales with AI, automation, and strategy.

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FAQ

What is the best Bright Data alternative for B2B outbound?

For B2B outbound, Apify is the strongest Bright Data alternative. The key difference is use case fit, Bright Data is proxy infrastructure built for enterprise data engineering, while Apify is a scraping platform built around a marketplace of pre-built Actors for the exact sources outbound teams use: LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, job boards, Google Maps, and G2. Setting up a Bright Data pipeline for LinkedIn scraping requires engineering resources and ongoing infrastructure management. Apify has an Actor for that, ready to configure and run in minutes. Pricing starts free with $5 in monthly credits, and new users get 20% off paid plans through ColdIQ with code 20BLACK at coldiq.com/tools/apify.

Is Bright Data worth it for small or mid-market B2B teams?

For most small and mid-market B2B teams, Bright Data is not worth it. The pricing is designed for enterprise scale, monthly minimums, pay-per-GB proxy costs, and contract structures that assume large-volume, ongoing data engineering. Beyond pricing, the platform requires technical setup that most outbound sales teams do not have the bandwidth to manage. Tools like Apify and Smartproxy cover the same core needs, reliable scraping, proxy rotation, CAPTCHA handling, at a fraction of the cost and with far less configuration. Bright Data becomes worth it when scraping at true enterprise scale hits blocks that smaller proxy networks cannot handle.

How does Apify compare to Bright Data for LinkedIn scraping?

Apify and Bright Data take fundamentally different approaches to LinkedIn scraping. Bright Data gives you proxy infrastructure, you still need to build or configure the scraper yourself, manage extraction logic, handle pagination, and maintain the pipeline. Apify gives you a pre-built Actor that someone has already built and tested against LinkedIn's structure, which you configure in minutes and run on Apify's cloud infrastructure. For most outbound teams, Apify's approach is faster, cheaper, and requires no engineering overhead. Bright Data's proxy layer makes sense if you are running scraping at such extreme volume that standard cloud proxies keep getting blocked, which is not a typical B2B outbound problem.

What is the cheapest Bright Data alternative?

ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee both offer developer-friendly pricing well below Bright Data's cost, including free tiers for testing. Smartproxy also has more accessible pricing than Bright Data for residential proxy coverage. For B2B outbound specifically, Apify's free tier includes $5 in monthly credits, which covers meaningful scraping volume before any payment is needed, and the Actor marketplace means you get pre-built scrapers for LinkedIn, job boards, and company data out of the box. Through ColdIQ, new Apify users also get 20% off paid plans with code 20BLACK, which makes it the most cost-effective starting point for outbound teams.

Can Apify replace Bright Data completely?

For B2B outbound use cases, yes, Apify replaces Bright Data completely. It handles proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and cloud execution automatically, so you get the same core infrastructure benefits without the complexity or cost. The gap only appears at the extreme end of enterprise-scale scraping, where sites have aggressive anti-bot measures that specifically block cloud scraping tools. In those cases, layering Bright Data's residential proxy network underneath a custom scraper can help. But for the vast majority of B2B outbound data needs, LinkedIn scraping, Sales Navigator exports, job board monitoring, G2 competitor lists, Apify's infrastructure is more than capable, and the pre-built Actor marketplace gives it a substantial advantage over Bright Data for time-to-value.

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